Looks Like Instagram Is Going to Be A Pretty Good Advertising Option

Salesforce is sharing data around early performance and cost numbers related to Instagram advertising campaigns over the past month. The companies partner via Salesforce Marketing Cloud products like social,com, Active Audiences, and Social Studio.

"Instagram is a relatively new platform for digital advertising, but initial results show it has the potential to be a powerful one," says Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Scott McCorkle. "Our results show that engagement on ads is high. We are excited to be working with great brands and agencies around the world to kickstart advertising to more than 300 million Instagram users."

According to the data, the overall click-through rate (CTR) is 1.50%, compared to a CTR of 0.84% in Q1 2015 on Facebook. Instagram has a global CPM of $6.29, Salesforce says, adding that this is an "early indicator" and about 90% higher than Facebook’s overall global CPM in Q1. The CPC for the ads is $0.42, which is two cents higher than Facebook ads.

"The high engagement rate can likely be attributed to Instagram’s premium, large-format ad type," a spokesperson for Salesforce tells WebProNews. "According to a recent report from eMarketer, Instagram is expected to represent over 10% of Facebook’s global revenues by 2017."

Instagram said last month it would make ads available to businesses of all sizes in the fall. The company's director of marketing operations told eMarkter:

We’ve spent the last 18 months establishing the platform for large brands. The next logical step is to empower businesses of all sizes. Being able to target narrower segments and achieve different types of objectives is essential. We want to offer a complete solution that allows businesses to purchase through self-serve interfaces and achieve the objectives they want to achieve.

We’re testing the action-oriented formats and buying through the API now, and we will be doing that through the summer with select partners and clients. Then we’ll be opening up globally and to all advertisers in the early fall timeframe.

Earlier this month, Instagram's API Partner Program launched, opening the gates for much more advertising on the service. Third-party API partners include Salesforce, Hootsuite, Kenshoo, Ampush, Nanigans, SocialCode, Brand Networks, Unified, and 4C.

A Salesforce spokesperson told us about its integration at the time, “The integration allows marketers to use Social.com for managing advertising campaigns at scale, Active Audiences to unlock and sync CRM data in Salesforce to optimize advertising and Social Studio for publishing, engagement, customer service, and analytics."

“Instagram is the mobile marketer’s platform of choice for a highly engaged and growing audience,” says Jesse Pujji, CEO and co-founder of Ampush. “It presents a great opportunity to deliver in-feed, mobile advertising at true scale with its user base of over 300 million monthly active users. AMP’s integration with Instagram will allow our customers to advertise across a visually dynamic environment for consumers with a highly active community. Our strategic and in-house creative expertise, paired with our marketing solutions, delivers a unique ability to bridge audience engagement with revenue.”

Pew has new research out showing significant growth in user engagement on Instagram. Last September, 49% of Instagram users were using it every day. The number is now up to 59%.

If you're looking to improve your Instagram marketing efforts, check out this infographic from “social media scientist” Dan Zarrella on the "science" of Instagram: